Jake's Tech Talk Laser Printers

The laser printer is a remarkable machine. It makes an incredibly complex task look deceptively simple, and it does it with an amazing degree of reliability. Some of the laser printers we have in service yet today have been printing pages daily for nearly 15 years now, and their counters show well over 100,000 pages have gone through them. If the rest of the devices we use in computing were as well designed and reliable as these, my job would be much simpler.

However, they require a little bit of TLC to keep them running smoothly.

One of the items I tend to preach about is the use of refilled cartridges. Over half of the problems I've seen with laser printers in those 15 years have been related to refilled cartridges. There is a wide range of quality in workmanship in refills, and even the best ones sometimes cause trouble. In general, what I offer as my opinion is this: If you use only one or two cartridges per year, the savings in cost to use refilled cartridges are negligible. Factory cartridges are a known quantity, with stringent manufacturing standards, and are generally longer lasting. If you're using three or more cartridges per year, maybe refills are worthwhile. In any case, I suggest shopping around a little more. In one case, we found new cartridges for only ten dollars more than a refill from the same vendor.

When you have to change the cartridge, spend an extra ten minutes to do some internal housekeeping:

Safety first! Shut the printer off and unplug the power cord before doing anything else inside. You may also want to consider wearing a shop apron and a pair of rubber gloves; it tends to be grubby inside the printer, especially if you've been using leaky refills. Be extremely cautious when working in the area of the fuser. It tends to be very hot, and can burn you if you're careless.

Grab that can of compressed air that you've all bought by now, and use it to blow the dust and loose toner out of the printer. (Remove the cartridge and the paper tray first!)

Remove the ozone filter and gently blow the dust and lint off of it also.

Check the mirror in the top lid to be sure it's clear. One printing problem I saw; a blank area in a strip down the middle of the page, was caused by a label that had fallen in front of the mirror.

Check the front of the laser engine and be sure a dust bunny is not hiding inside the slot. The laser beam has to shine through that slot to be able to work its magic.

Check the top fuser roller under the green cover in the back of the printer. Make sure that you replace the wiper along with the cartridge, and that the top fuser roller is clean. If you see that the coating on the top roller is scratched or peeling, contact the helpdesk to schedule replacing the fuser. You'll probably notice this on your printed pages first.

One last bit of preaching: I do not encourage recycling paper by printing the back of previously printed pages. It's very easy to spot the ones who do this; their printers usually have a lot of scorched lint in the fuser. This is caused by a combination of paper dust and old toner that flakes off of the reprinted pages. This also has a tendency to collect and clog the temperature sensors in the fuser, and contributes to fuser failures. The small amount of savings in paper costs, in my opinion, is more than offset by the cost of repairs and lost printing time. Recycle previously printed pages by cutting them into scratch pads, or by disposing of them in the recycle bins in your community. Save a tree, but save your printer, too! 

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